Sony PlayStation Website Hack Exposes Personal Information on Users

A possible security breach into the Website of PlayStation Store might have compromised private information belonging to a small number of users, according to an announcement by Sony Computer Entertainment on their Websites of PlayStation US and UK, as reported by CRN on March 27, 2008.

Sony revealed that there might have been unauthorized access of personal information of users, who visited the company's site to use its online service for content download. This access might have been through the PlayStation's PC version. The company further said that possibly passwords of some users of PlayStation Network might also have gone through unauthorized changes.

A warning on the US PlayStation site suggests that the vulnerability could have let hackers access accounts on PlayStation Store through a computer, view personal data and buy content by using the store "Wallets".

However, according to Sony, the Personal Security Number (PSN) accounts never display users' credit card number. Also, as PlayStation Store accounts too do not display the entire credit card numbers, therefore, Sony asserts that there hardly had been a hack to steal any information relating to credit cards.

Meanwhile, the company assured of having conducted a probe into the security breach on the computer and possible tampering with related passwords. It also confirmed that following quick measures to deal with the problem, the system's security was brought back to normal. Also, it was notifying to customers who might have experienced an unfavorable impact on their accounts.

Sony is urging users of PlayStation Network to log into the service using their existing password only to make sure that there has been no tampering with their accounts. Users who are able to successfully sign in would know that their account details had not been compromised, according to the company.

Besides, according to similar news in the end week of March 2008, Website security provider, WhiteHat Security Inc., disclosed that 90% of the Websites continue to have serious flaws that attackers could exploit with mean seven flaws per site. Website attacks continue to increase, placing sensitive private information like credit card numbers, Social Security numbers and others at risk.